I. Turn Problems Into Opportunities And Make Millions!!! With Ron Klein

Episode Summary

Ron Klein is the grandfather of possibilities.  There is no one like him!  He is the creator of many things we take for granted. He is the inventor of the credit card magnetic strip and MLS real estate listings to name a few.  Ron talks to us about business. His advice is simple and profound. Entrepreneurs this is a rare and special opportunity!  Listen in as this Ron Klein 86 years young takes us on a journey of remarkable discoveries and inventions.

Learn 
-how any problem can become an opportunity
-why being a communicator can bring you big rewards
-the best way to look at your business
-the secret to running any business
-what groundbreaking projects he’s working on right now

Ron Klein is an ordinary man who accomplishes extraordinary things. He is a PROBLEM SOLVER. Every solution has resulted in monumental change, either in a new invention or a simple solution.   His innovative ideas have changed the world. He is the inventor of the Magnetic Strip on the Credit Card, Credit Card Validity Checking System, and the developer of computerized systems for Real Estate (MLS) Multiple Listing Services, Voice Response for the Banking Industry and BOND Quotation and Trade Information for the New York Stock Exchange.

Ron‘s latest patent is for a device that enables a visually impaired person the ability to identify an item when in the physical range of that item. It utilizes a smartphone and special coded adhesive labels.  We have enhanced Eli Technology to provide unlimited marketing functions and benefits for all industries.     Ron is a STRATEGIC ADVISOR – CONSULTANT – MENTOR – PROBLEM SOLVER and SPEAKER. Huffington Post, brief video clip about Ron: https://youtu.be/sjLPFzuftnA

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You can find Ron Klein at:
Website: https://thegrandfatherofpossibilities.com
Email: ronklein@4ronklein.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-klein-611a2810

Check out the Outsourcing Playbook For Busy Entrepreneurs here: https://winthehourwintheday.com/outsourcing-playbook

Ron Klein Podcast Transcription

[00:11:33] Kris Ward: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of when the hour, when the day podcast and I am your host, Chris ward, and today, uh, all my lucky stars have Sean on me. We have an absolutely wonderful guest. This is going to be a very exciting day.

[00:11:49] This really is going to change how you see your business in life. I’m not kidding you all right in the house. We have Mr. Ron Klein. Now you may not know the name, but I. Guarantee you guarantee you 100%, you have used one of his inventions. One of the services he’s provided for the world. Now, even though most of you are listening to us on iTunes or whatever your platform is, your, your phone device, I’m going to play a sizzle reel here because I don’t believe I will do a justice to explain the, the, the wonderment of his business life.

[00:12:24] It’s unbelievable. And for those of you on YouTube, you get to watch it otherwise. If you’re not, you know, you want to learn more, just hop over to YouTube, yourself, and search Ron Klein or the, when the hour in the day podcast. So let me just play this for you guys. Listen carefully. It will just literally blow your socks off.

[ INSERT VIDEO ] 

[00:14:10] okay.

[00:15:14] Kris Ward: Well, there we go. Mr. Ron Klein. Welcome to the show. We are thrilled to have you here.

[00:15:20] Ron Klein: Thank you, Chris. I didn’t realize that you weren’t going to share the screen, so I didn’t see anything.

[00:15:30] Kris Ward: They did. And you didn’t see it, but the people will see it on YouTube. We’ll see it. I just didn’t want to get too complicated with the screen. I tried to keep it simple so that I didn’t mock up when we started talking, but I, I know, you know, your. So you didn’t have to see

[00:15:47] Ron Klein: lots of stuff.

[00:15:48] Kris Ward: Yeah. There you go. So where do we start with you? I mean, okay. I stopped you when we started chatting before we started the show, because you said, well, Chris, I’m not really an inventor, I’m a communicator. And I’m a say you’re, you’re gracious and you simplify everything you’re doing, but.

[00:16:05] Let’s hear you minimize all your fantastic accomplishments about being a communicator.

[00:16:10] Ron Klein: I really, I said I was a communicator, but I guess I’m really an innovator when I meant communicator, because I have a technical background when I originally started in the business. I was the guy who was the go-between between listening to the customer or the consumer’s pain points and explaining that to the engineering department, because for some reason or other, they never speak the same language.

[00:16:35] And I figured, you know what. I’m an interpreter. I can interpret what the pain point of the customer is and what they really want need. And again, what the engineering department can do. So that’s how I call myself a communicator, but I don’t, I don’t look at myself as an it, as a inventor. I look at myself as an innovator.

[00:16:56] I make things better. For instance, I didn’t invent the credit card. I invented the magnetic strip on a credit card. So originally all it was was a piece of plastic with your blessed name and the account number. All I did was automated, made it faster and took the burden off the merchant so that he didn’t have to make the decision.

[00:17:17] Because in that video, what the merchant is doing is looking up in a long list of account numbers. Good credit, bad credit. So he had to make the decision very slow. And then my first invention was just to put a keypad into a memory system, so he could key in the account number. And if it didn’t come up in a memory system, The person, the client was good to go, but the burden was still on the merchant.

[00:17:43] He still had the responsibility of making the decision and putting the number in accurately. And that’s when the real real tape recorders came out. And I figured she’s, I know how that works. I’m an engineer. And if I didn’t know how it would work, my idea is pretty good. I’ll hire an engineer and he can make it happen.

[00:18:00] So it was probably one of the simplest challenges. And that’s what I really want to talk about.

[00:18:06] Kris Ward: Let me, let me jump in here for one second. If I may, first of all, I just want to unpack some of the brilliant things you said before. I do that though. Do you not have the temptation of every store you’re in every single time you pull out your credit card to tell somebody that you’re the mentor like, does that get old?

[00:18:21] Do you want to tell people that. You don’t want to tell them you don’t want to brag.

[00:18:27] Ron Klein: Chris. When I came up with that idea, I was solving, and this is what I was going to say. I’m a problem solver, but I don’t think those is problems. I look at it as Ms. Challenges. So when the major department store came to me back in 1964, they said, Ron, we have a problem.

[00:18:45] Then I said, No. My philosophy is there’s no problems, there’s situations, and some situations could be turned into a challenge. And there’s a gift behind every challenge. I looked at it and I said, what is your problem? And they said, it takes too long to make a charge purchase. That’s what they call them in those days.

[00:19:04] And the burdens on the wrong person, they said simple. We’ll speed it up and we’ll take the burden off the merchant. And all I did was take the contents of the, uh, the magnetic tape idea and put it on the back of the credit card and make you the motor. Okay. You slid a little piece of magnetic tape through the thing that mimicked it.

[00:19:25] So my philosophy is. Keep it really simple solve the problem and provide a benefit. So my whole philosophy is, and I do it with my fingers. You gotta be smart, daring. And different. Okay. Now what I mean by smart, it doesn’t mean a college degree or a PhD from whoever that means. Learn something new every day, pay attention.

[00:19:52] Listen to everybody. There’s always some, even from the trash man, you can learn something. Okay. So everybody has something to offer, learn, pack it away in your brain when the time comes that you need that. Recall it. So that’s my philosophy to be daring means don’t be afraid to make mistakes. If you painted something in the wrong color, the first time painted a different color.

[00:20:16] Okay. So beat therein. That’s what you learn by making mistakes. The last thing in my life that is so important, whatever you provide must provide a benefit. Okay. So to be different is to provide a benefit. I always say that if it doesn’t provide a benefit, it’s no more than bearing different. And, and

[00:20:44] Kris Ward: something else you said in there previous to that, which I think is so important and something I’m really passionate about is you said, look, I was an engineer. I knew how to do that. But if I didn’t no big deal, I would have hired somebody because I’m all about that. Your team together, everyone amplifies money and that, you know, that’s everything you’re not supposed to know or do it all yourself.

[00:21:03] Self I’m all about the team. So you just whimsically said, yeah, I came up with an idea. I wasn’t my job to know how to do it if I did great, but that was never going to slow me down.

[00:21:14] Ron Klein: Never. I always say that I learned this whole philosophy in grade school. How to solve word problems. You know, you remember the old word problems so much junk in there.

[00:21:26] You didn’t know what to do. And then the whole quest about word problems is you have to find out what’s the given and what’s the solution you’re looking for. Everything else in between is the journey. It’s the minutia. So.

[00:21:39] Kris Ward: Okay. I was like 20, before I figured out that there was extra stuff in there. I thought it was all relevant.

[00:21:44] Nobody told me that until I was like 20.

[00:21:49] Ron Klein: The real name of it has been Nooshin so don’t have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Okay. What’s the given, what am I working with? And what do I want to end up with? And everything else is the journey. Now there’s little hurdles along the way, and that’s where you, if you painted it, the wrong color, painted a new color.

[00:22:08] So I always say failure’s never an option and there’s only plan a no other plan only plan a and if plan a, you started with the wrong color. What are you going to do? Your audience is going to paint it a different color. A hundred percent. So

[00:22:27] Kris Ward: the credit card is phenomenal. Your advice is profoundly simple, but hugely impactful.

[00:22:34] I mean, it just really resonated. I was lucky enough to have learned from you on a previous thing with our friend James Ballin shack, and, you know, Yes, he’s wonderful. And it really resonated with your wisdom resonated with me for weeks. I, I, you know, I just thought of you every day. The other big thing that just totally shocked me.

[00:22:53] It was so I, everybody uses it is MLS. How did we get

[00:22:56] Ron Klein: there? Okay, well, first let me just answer the question on the credit card.

[00:23:01] Kris Ward: Oh, folks. I apologize.

[00:23:04] Ron Klein: I don’t know what to brag about. It is just solving an issue, solving a situation. You notice I didn’t call it a problem so that I know at that time it was going to affect billions of people.

[00:23:18] Nobody. I knew it was going to solve the issue. At that major department store and all the other branches. And that was what I wanted to do. So as it grew, it doesn’t make it, you know, I’m not a fancy guy. I came from the very working class family back in the thirties. My dad was a male, a postal worker. My mom worked in a department store and I was fortunate enough to be very creative with the toys.

[00:23:44] I would make myself with string and cardboard and tape, and I loved it. And these were, they were different times and I feel privileged. I’m going on 86 years old now. And I feel privileged that I spent all my time starting in the 1930s until now, because I didn’t miss anything. So many of these young people.

[00:24:07] They didn’t see what I saw. So I was so fortunate. I even saw the invention of television and invention of all kinds of interesting things. So I feel very fortunate to be where I am now and the fact that I’m still not empty. So the other things I did along the way was, um, back in 1967, there was a need for people to say, Okay.

[00:24:34] I live in point a and I’m going to go to point B. And when I get there, it would be so nice. If there was real estate people that knew what I wanted before I got out to California, I’m leaving New York only to get to California with my family. I want, I want to know all the different properties that are available and likewise, I have.

[00:24:54] A property for sale. I want people to know what property I have per sale. So narrow the national board of realtors in Chicago came to me in 1967 and said, what can we do to help this and make this thing come alive? And I came up with lots of ideas, came up with portable terminals. And at that time we were using the touch-tone phone was just coming out, but not everybody had a touch-tone phone.

[00:25:21] So I invented a terminal, a little suitcase terminal with batteries in it that they could set up parameters on thumb wheel switches, what they wanted, what the priorities were, what they have and what they’re going to sell. Put it on thumb wheels, switches. And I figured I got a great idea. I can make an acoustic coupler where they can take the old dial up phone, put it in the handle of this little thing that beeped call up the central computer.

[00:25:50] And then push a button to say, go, and it would take all the contents of the switches that I set up and it would transmit all the contents in the, in tones and touchstones. So this was just this touchdown phones were coming out and I would say, okay, a one is this tone and two is this done and so on and so forth.

[00:26:11] And I was able to transmit that. And that was the start of MLS. And then to print out the information Twix and telex was the communication devices in those days. That was the email back in the sixties. Of course.

[00:26:28] Kris Ward: Yeah,

[00:26:29] Ron Klein: love that. And people would use the Twix and telex by dial up over the telephone lines and I converted them so that you can just have a little keyboard and you can put in what was now in the MLS number.

[00:26:42] And it would print out all the contents. So it was basic. It did the job.

[00:26:51] Kris Ward: Well, I would like to correct you a little bit. Cause you did say you were 86 years old. I’d like to tell you you’re 86 years young. My friend. Yes. And I mean, imagine sitting here, we’re talking to someone who is, you said you very clearly remember the invention of television and now you’re sitting on a podcast where people are listening to you in Italy and Australia around the world.

[00:27:12] So look at you keeping up with what’s going on. Well, wow.

[00:27:17] Ron Klein: So great people. Can’t talk to Thomas Edison today and he invented illumination in the late bulb and so on and so forth. I feel fortunate that they can hear me in live voice. And I’m still here from what I do in the 1960s. And I’m still here so they can hear me.

[00:27:37] Um,

[00:27:38] Kris Ward: With no pretense of slowing down. Cause you’re working on stuff now. You’re not here,

[00:27:42] Ron Klein: you’re still working. Um, and I’m making some major changes, which I’ll tell you about a later. So MLS then I came up with the idea because touch-tone phones just came into being of taking the touch-tone phone, calling a central bank, computer and beeping those tones down the line.

[00:28:04] From the touch-tone phone and that could be your account number. It goes in the computer and I was converting the computer from touch tone to, from text to voice and then feedback, the banking information and voice. So in 1968 was the first voice response. Wow. In fact, when I did it, I recorded all the different syllables on a magnetic drum that would rotate in milliseconds.

[00:28:35] And that’s why the first voice response that you would hear was very mechanical. It would sound like this because I had to seek out. The different verbiage from each track of the drum. So I had all the different syllables there. Then after a few years, I was able to synthesize that and they came out very smooth, like real voice.

[00:28:58] So that was interesting. And then. Then my career really started. Yeah, because

[00:29:04] Kris Ward: up until now it was like slow stuff. So, so, okay. Things started to pick up with the versus all those first major inventions, not so much, but hell is when it really got started.

[00:29:14] Ron Klein: Well, it really got started when I started making some gross errors and big mistakes.

[00:29:21] Like I say, smart, daring, indifferent. If you’re not daring, you’re not learning. And I was a young, young man. I was in my early thirties and I was prepared to make all the mistakes cause that wasn’t a good listener. Remember I said, you have to get, be smart and listened to everything every day. I wasn’t a good listener.

[00:29:42] So as I was building my company and we’re making product for MLS and per voice response, my company grew to 125 people. Because in those days, there was no such thing, no such thing. As the internet and software, everything was done with circuit cards. And hardware, transistors and resistors. And so I needed engineers.

[00:30:06] I needed a dress mint, the Lake circuit card formats out. Then I needed manufacturing people to put the components on the boards and it was growing so fast. I needed money because I was getting so many orders, but I had no money to buy material and pay the people. So I went to investors and I said, I need help.

[00:30:27] Well, I was able to raise. Three quarters of a million dollars in the late sixties, which was equivalent. I guess that millions today get started and the company continued to grow. And after a while it was growing so rapidly, guess what? I needed more money. I didn’t have enough money to fill the orders. So I went back to my investors and I said, what do I do now?

[00:30:54] They said, well, let’s have an IPO. Let’s take it public. I had no idea what a public, what he meant by public. I say public. Is that when there’s little stalls outside of construction sites? No, no. We’re going to go to the stock market. We’re going to go public and initial private placement. So I went to the library and I got myself.

[00:31:16] A book on the 1934 securities act allotted everything about registration, prospectuses, and so on. And I was the sharpest guy in S one S two registrations. We put together the company together, took it public. I raised another couple of million dollars and I was happy. Around that time, we became extremely attractive to a major insurance company that said we like what those young guys do we want to acquire it.

[00:31:48] So, and I figured, okay, maybe it’s time to retire. I was 34 years old. It was retirement. I right. I was bought out. And three days later after I did all the fishing, I wanted a fish. I said, I gotta go to work. I said, this is not for me. I’m not, you know, I’m not used to sitting on my shelf. I work a minimum of 18 hours a day.

[00:32:15] I went back to him. I said, I’m going to give you back all your stock options. Just let me free out of my contract. I want to go to work. Had no idea as to what I wanted to do. All I knew was I didn’t want another 125 employees. I wanted something that would generate residual income. So I figured well, until I can come up with a good idea, I’m going to start selling a representing other people’s products.

[00:32:41] And I was really sharp and communications and teletypes. So I started selling communication modems for, to connect to computers. And one day I was calling on a major client that I used to deal with who was in the communications business, who use loads of communication gear. And while I was sitting at his desk, I saw a bid sheet on his desk and that’s when my whole career changed.

[00:33:08] And I said, what is this? And he said, Oh, that’s a bid sheet from the Western union company. They refurbished teletype equipment every week and sell it. Refurbished to the communication industry. And he said, you know, we’re in the news business, it was a big company in the news business. And he said, we use tons of tons of teletypes, but he says, we’re so overstocked.

[00:33:31] Natalie said, would you like the bitchy? And I said, why not? Sounds interesting. I took the bid sheet, I rented a truck and I went to a warehouse where Western union did all this refurbishing, which was 60 miles from my house in New Jersey. And I went there and I was so excited. They said you came at such an opportune time.

[00:33:56] We’re putting up 12,000 of old, old teletypes that were used during the second world war. They ruin battleships. They’re great. We’re refurbishing some of them and they’re fantastic. We get 12,000 of them. You want to bid on them? I figured I have no idea what to do. I bid pennies pennies on the dollar, and I was so excited.

[00:34:21] I went back the following week and they said, guess what, Mr. Klein, you won all 12,000. I was so excited, but you know what? I did, Chris myself, the worst liability I could ever buy. I never asked where they were dumb as that. Okay. Fortunately, 4,000 were in a warehouse close to where Western union was. The other 8,000 were all over the country.

[00:34:53] They were in Dallas, they were in California. They were in Chicago and they wasn’t a union said, now you understand Mr. Klein, you have to take possession of these in 30 days. Mm, absolutely. Holy Moses, what do I do now? These weigh hundreds and hundreds of pounds, loaded steel cabinets with printers and keyboards and so on and so forth.

[00:35:16] What do I do? So I didn’t buy myself. Teletypes I bought the worst liability. I could ever buy it at a young age. So what do you do?

[00:35:27] You

[00:35:27] Ron Klein: can call the junk, man. I call it, I need help. I’m painting it a different color. And he said, well, let’s see what you have here, son. He said, you know, you’ve got printers and keyboards and paper take punches and sell it.

[00:35:43] He said, let’s look in the bottom portion of these machines. That’s where the electronics is in the open them up. They were loaded with printed circuit cards. Wow. I said, what’s the well for it? He said these printed circuit cards. Are loaded with gold traces because they were used out at sea and they didn’t want them to trust the rust.

[00:36:06] And they had the best conductivity and gold was cheap. Then it was only $35 an ounce and he gave. Excellent conductivity for all the circuits. And he said, guess what? He said, I can take all these circuit cards from all 8,000 machines. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. He said, if I put them into a I’d bet, the cyanide eats the gold of the cards and surfaces, the top will skim the gold off and split the essay.

[00:36:38] I said, fantastic. Fat in cash. We’ve made so much cash with all that, but guess what, Chris? Now I had 8,000 pieces of real job because they had, they were working. They had no electric products, you know, salvaged all the gold. What did I do? I called the junk man back. No, what do I do? I said, I’m running out of time.

[00:37:07] I got to get rid of these things. He said, well, let’s see what we have. And he analyzed it, that the cabinets, because they were used out at sea were very, they were loaded with chromium in the steel because chromium prevents rusting and he said, there’s a foreign car automobile dealer. Now that’s bringing and introducing their new cars into the U S and they’re having a serious Russ problem with their cars.

[00:37:36] They need chromium in all their steel. He said, let me contact them. I’m sure they’ll put all of this stuff. When the ships take it back to Japan and we’re unloaded and that’s what they did. And boom. That is the most

[00:37:51] Kris Ward: crazy as example I’ve ever heard in my life of taking lemon and making like fruit salad, lemonade, and a main meal out of it.

[00:38:01] Ron Klein: Chris, that’s where it just starts. But so now I was in business. Okay. I had 4,000 machines back in church, near cherry Hill, New Jersey, where I lived and they were 60 miles from my home. And. I hired a technician and I figured let’s go over some of these machines, make sure they’re in good working condition or refurbish them and repaint them and sell them to the giants in the communications business.

[00:38:30] Now, some of these machines are worth two, $3,000, $4,000. New. I figured, wow, what a great business, or I can just lease them, put them out on lease to these companies because I own them for nothing. Great business. I got started three months later, I get a phone call. Hello, the New York stock exchange is calling me.

[00:38:58] We went to Western union because they had 273 special wall-mount teletypes that we use at the New York stock exchange trading floor as inquiry stations. And they said, we sold them all to a little company in New Jersey, you guys. And I said, Oh, well, I’m interested in doing business. Then they said, will you sell us those machines?

[00:39:25] And I said, I got a better deal. I’ll lease them to you on a full pay. At least that you’ll own them. After two years at X number of dollars, a machine I’ll come to New York stock exchange with a technician, Mount them on the walls and fix them, providing you, give me a maintenance country, a maintenance contract for life to maintain these machines.

[00:39:47] As long as they’re on the floor of the new York’s not to change, they said absolutely. We don’t want to maintain them. I hired a tech. I was on a journey every day from my house to the New York stock exchange, walking around the trading floor, like a big deal, making sure that every machine worked, if they would fail, we replaced it with a spare printer.

[00:40:11] They would put that printer in my car. I take it back to my little shop in New Jersey. We repair it and back again, I was in business. I was in business at the New York stock exchange. I was in heaven and making a lot of money on maintenance contract while I was there. I noticed that at the New York stock exchange every day, at the end of the day, there was paper up to your knees in cards and paper all over the floor.

[00:40:40] It was treated. Like, and, and, and teaks. I mean, it was so old the way they traded, they had no electronics, no automation, everything was little printed, circuit cards and little printed cards, and they would Mark them up and file them and take them to the boots and trade. Everything was paper. I looked around, I said, I can automate so much.

[00:41:03] I went to the management of the exchange and I said, I can fix this. I can fix that. I came up with program training. I said it was so easy. I’ll do this, I’ll do that. Then I can do it in a matter of a couple of months. I’ll hire a few guys and we’ll do it and try it out. And if it works super, they said wonderful.

[00:41:22] They thought I was IBM. I would forget stuff so quick. It was great. We started doing a lot of business there and I had a software engineer and a technician. Then my career started. Okay. Remember, all of this came about eating a little bit sheet where the guy’s desk daring and different opportunity.

[00:41:51] What’s the given. What am I looking for? So you don’t have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. You have to pay attention. Listen to everybody, bear that. So here I am. It’s now up to 1983 because I’m at the New York stock exchange. Every day I started there in 79, 1983. I go to the bond trading floor. So the New York stock exchange that has two things.

[00:42:16] They trade equities or stocks. They trade debt. Corporate bonds. Corporate bonds is the debt. When the stock, the stock market or the stock market was all automated. They had terminals in the upstairs offices and they would trade. The brokers would trade on the terminals. I go to the bond trading floor and they’re throwing their hands up in the, on the phone and they’re shouting.

[00:42:40] And I said, what are these people doing? It’s an auction market. They auction this every day. And I said, why in the world are they doing that? We can automate the so easily. And they said, Ron, they’ve been doing it like this for 205 years. They’re not going to change. I said, listen, I got a simple method. If I can automate this thing, would you give me an exclusive license to the seven, eight corporate bonds all over wall street to all the member companies?

[00:43:09] They said, sure. You write up the contract. It’ll never work because they’re never going to change. I felt a little box. I put it on their main line with a video terminal. And I would program in the bonds that I assumed I was a trader I’d program in the bonds I was interested in. As those bonds would come down a little box would filter them out, pop them up on a screen.

[00:43:32] Boom. I could trade them right away. It worked beautiful. I started calling up every bond trader. There were 1500 bond traders that traded in New York, corporate listed months. And I started calling him up all over wall street. And if I wasn’t buying or selling a bond and then five seconds clunk, they hang up on me.

[00:43:54] How am I going to, what am I going to do? How do I get this great little product nobody’s interested, befriended the largest bond house on wall street with the major. Um, manager and I said, listen, Joe, I got something I want to give you for 30 days free. I’m going to run a communication line into your office from the New York stock exchange.

[00:44:21] I’ll pay for the line. I’ll give you the boxes. I’ll give you the video terminal. Just keep it for 30 days, free try and trade bonds here. See what you can do. Well, he was getting information milliseconds before it hit the floor because they’re on the phone and they’re shouting his, this is coming right across the line as it happens with the screen, right.

[00:44:46] His phone rang off the hook. All the traders are calling him saying, what the heck are you doing for the last two weeks? We can’t top you’re talking every bond there. We can’t buy or sell a bond. He said, Oh, Oh, you need one of those little run climb boxes

[00:45:04] box. They started calling me like phone rang off the hook within three months, they’re saying we got, we need a box. And I said, okay, this is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity. There’s a gift behind every challenge. I said, well, to join my bind, the club, every trader has to pay me $10,000. They said, wow, but okay, we can probably make that back in a month or two.

[00:45:33] So every trader on wall street had to pay me $10,000 and join my club. And I said, okay, now all you have to do is just buy the little box and the video terminal, and you’re a business. And they said, Oh no, on wall street, we don’t buy anything. We only rent the equipment. Oh, what do I do? Well, the box cost me a hundred dollars to build.

[00:45:56] And the terminal cost me 50 bucks. I said, how’s $300 a month. Great. It was in for a quarter of a century. Okay. Now you don’t have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Where did all this come from? I read a little bit cheat on the guy’s desk.

[00:46:20] Kris Ward: A little bit cheat. Oh my gosh. You should like children’s stories.

[00:46:24] The tale of the little bid sheet. I saw a bid on a desk and this is the tail

[00:46:31] Ron Klein: and I made the biggest mistake by buying all those teletypes. Because what if I had to get rid of him, what was I going to do? And I got all my cash back who knew that put, did you know that if you take gold traces and put it in the Sinai and eats the gold salts up and it rises to the surface of the Sinai?

[00:46:51] Kris Ward: I didn’t even know. I didn’t even know enough to ask that question. That’s what, I didn’t know.

[00:46:55] Ron Klein: I, all I knew was that the junk man, his telephone number. Oh my gosh.

[00:47:00] Kris Ward: Oh my heavens.

[00:47:01] Ron Klein: It’s a matter of. Looking at every problem as a situation and say, does this situation contain a challenge? Jane’s a challenge.

[00:47:14] What do I do? I find that gift behind the challenge because I’m smart, daring in different,

[00:47:23] Kris Ward: and you’re still going. My friend, as I say, you’re 86 years young, you were working on projects as we speak, right. This moment.

[00:47:31] Ron Klein: Do you want to take a rest and then I’ll tell you the rest of the story.

[00:47:35] Kris Ward: Okay, go ahead.

[00:47:37] Tell me.

[00:47:39] Ron Klein: Okay. Um, about four, four and a half years ago. I have a friend who’s totally blind by the way. I have a little impediment myself, no big deal, but I fit in and I’m totally blind in one eye. And I got about 50% vision in the other eye, but it works, you know, I find other ways to get around it. So I was having breakfast with this blind gentleman whose brilliant PhD was a VP with a very large company.

[00:48:10] And I said, Jim, what’s on your wishlist. And he said, you know, we’re both pretty smart guys. We’re very inventive. We’re creative. He said, I’d like a simple little device that I can help. That would help me identify the things. They come in contact with my daily life, my stuff in my pantry. What’s in my medicine cabinet and my clothes what’s on the hanger.

[00:48:35] Where’s my blue shirt. Where’s my yellow shirt. And I said, let me think about that a little bit. It was right around that time. I was learning all about QR codes, took the QR codes and did some special things with them that I made little adhesive labels, put it in a little tiny book that I could sell for just always a cost, very inexpensive $29.

[00:49:01] And you get a hundred labels and I built an app free. That they can take their electronic leash, you know?

[00:49:08] Kris Ward: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The cell phone, everybody.

[00:49:11] Ron Klein: Yeah. I gave him a free app that automatically they would scan this little QR code and they can record on that QR code, what the device is. In other words, when they brought Pete up, let her home, when they put, put their blood pressure medication in the medicine cabinet, they can distinguish that between there.

[00:49:34] Aspirin and they can change it anytime. It was totally programmable. And they came up with so many wonderful ideas. And it went gangbusters because there’s 240 million people in the world that are blind. 2 billion people just here in the U S that are blind. It was a great godsend. I mean, it was terrific.

[00:49:55] It costs what blind person wouldn’t invest $29 to get some money for this. So I figured, you know what great idea, but what about the cited. If I had such a great idea with this little code, what can I do for the sighted world that started? And I came up with something that’s revolutionizing today. In fact, you may have heard about it already.

[00:50:23] I’m using QR codes, which is nothing more than a link that can be adhered to any kind of surface. In other words, you can put a QR code in your computer. You can put it on a screen, but you can also put it on a piece of paper. And scan it and it’ll do something. And I said, okay, why don’t I make the QR code, the front door to your so-called house?

[00:50:48] Okay. And your house is the cloud or your house has some online real-time system and the QR code never changes. It’s just the front door to your house. And you want to change all the content that you want to show me in your house in real estate, on products. When you’re grocery store shelves, I want to know all about the product who makes it natural product, uh, you know, um, supplements and so on and so forth.

[00:51:16] But I don’t want to touch it. Especially during this virus, I want to walk in with like phone, go into a whole foods or a fresh market and say, okay, what’s that product? What’s that product. What’s that going to do for me? And give them all kinds of information and history. Okay. And as I, and as that data is updated, I update it in real time, but the code never changes.

[00:51:42] Say I do that on real estate sites. Every real estate sign about that house. When we sell that house, we, we D we keep the code to save, put new contents behind it. How bout if I have magazines, whether they be digital or whether they be analog or hard copy. And I put a nice ad in there that I spent thousands of dollars for, but now I put a little QR code in the bottom of that ad, but it’s really an Eli code.

[00:52:12] That makes the ad come alive. That takes me through all kinds of things. I see a Ferrari car and I say, wow, that is cool. Now I scan the little QR code. Now the Ferrari card. I hear it. Start up. I see a nice blonde get into the car through the breeze, or let’s say there’s a product on the air, peds, pencils, anything.

[00:52:37] And I say, I scan it. I like the ad. And then when I scan it, I said all about that product description, the background. And then I see a little tag that says buy. Now I can buy it right there. I can turn. I’m just throwing out a few of the ideas that we’ve

[00:52:58] Kris Ward: captured.

[00:53:00] Ron Klein: He’s got over a hundred thousand products on it already, and it’s going gangbusters because.

[00:53:06] Here’s the way I define it. The QR code is the front door to my app that you don’t have to download my system, which is so involved in so much flexibility. In real time. I say it’s an app because it’s an application, whether it be real estate or shelf items or whatever. So. My QR code is the front door to your house.

[00:53:33] And it takes you where I want you to go. Who needs websites anymore? Who needs what? And all you do is just copy and paste.

[00:53:42] Kris Ward: My, Oh my gosh, you know what? Yeah, that’s what he’s doing now. That’s what he’s doing now. And he’s retired lasted three days when he was in his thirties, Mr. Ron Klein, you have just bestowed upon us wisdom that we will all carry forever.

[00:53:57] What an honor, what a treat? What, what an encyclopedia of brilliance and, and taking us on this absolute magical journey. I cannot. Possibly. Thank you enough. I could talk to you all days, or at least a couple of times on Sundays.

[00:54:14] Ron Klein: Okay. You don’t have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer and you want to be an innovator yourself, especially in these hard times.

[00:54:24] Maybe you’re out of work, reinvent yourself. What can you do to make something better? It could be simple. What can you do to make it better? Okay. And provide a benefit. I think provide a benefit and you can make it better. You’re in anybody’s capability. Those

[00:54:47] Kris Ward: are beautiful closing words. I cannot thank you enough.

[00:54:51] We’re all going to everybody write that down, pull over right now. If you’re driving right down, don’t miss the wise words of Mr. Ron client, and we thank you so much for every moment of every second of this law. It’s been a magical journey when the hour, when the day. Thanks. You incredibly.

[00:55:10] Ron Klein: I ran my mouth for 45 minutes.

[00:55:12] I’m sorry. I knew if I were, but I didn’t stop talking.

[00:55:17] Kris Ward: You know, what mean the joy and it was all our pleasure. We are thrilled. We are thrilled. I’m thrilled. You were generous with your time and I thank you for that. Thank you so much.

[00:55:26] Ron Klein: Thank you so much. Congratulations to what you’re doing. Remember audience smart, daring in different.

[00:55:36] They made a mistake. The first time painted a new color. Bye bye everyone.